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01.29.2008 at 11:59PM PST, ID: 23122052

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8.4

vista fails to boot, safe mode gets stuck at crcdisk.sys

Zone: Windows Vista

Tags: microsoft, vista ultimate

hi,
yesterday during some storms we kept getting short power outages.... unfortunatly i found out that my UPS wasn't working and so each outage caused my computer to abuptly turn off.

after the 4th or 5th outage my computer wouldn't start up.... i'm running vista ultimate and the start-up got past the coloured line/boxes moving on the screen and then everything goes black and it hangs there...

tried booting in safe mode but that gets stuck on crcdisk.sys
tried booting from my vista dvd to run a repair but there were were no repair options shown... no idea why...

i have a xp/vista dual boot system so i've booted to xp and everything works fine there... i ran a chkdisk on the partition with vista installed and no errors were shown...

i seem to have full access to the vista partition (no errors)...

does anyone have any suggestions how i can repair my vista installation?

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Question Stats

Zone: OS

Question Asked By: dog_star

Solution Provided By: LeeTutor

Participating Experts: 2

Solution Grade: B

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01.30.2008 at 01:06AM PST, ID: 20775639

Rank: Guru

Merete:

ouch, really I would have thought you understood the significance of one surge

after the 4th or 5th outage my computer wouldn't start up
each outage caused my computer to abuptly turn off.
Well I would say several possible things have happened,
your common sense went out the window after the first surge.
I would take the hdd out and test as a slave in another computer.
Unpower pull out the plug on both, remove your hdd 4 screws, move the jumper on the rear to slave, pull out the power and ide behind the cdrom master on teh other and plug your hdd in here, power in again and boot, if it boots then you hdd is okay, wait as it takes longer that xp will find new hardware your slaved hdd and will become the drive of the cdrom
Any lights at all when you start a boot? monitor lights orange or yellow?
any noise like fans running?
Any green lights next to the network card? router?

the first hardware to get the full blunt of the surge is the network card and the router since this is connected to the ground wired by the phone line unless you have wireless.
Get a new network card and see if that fixes it.
the next inline that can absorb the surge is the video card if you have a PCI card not onboard.

Your processor is probably fried.
something on the mainboard has blown.
The power supply unit is now unstable.
Your best option here is to take it to a computer tech who has the tools to test the electrical system mainboard
circuitory etc.

01.30.2008 at 01:11AM PST, ID: 20775669

Rank: Guru

Merete:

lol should have read your whole post,
slave it dog_star, that's best option at this stage.

01.30.2008 at 01:15AM PST, ID: 20775683

Rank: Guru

Merete:

In xp you have the disc management console,
Control panel administrative tools Computer manager> disc management

which OS were you logged into when the power went off?
Check the boot.ini see if it points to the 2 partitons.

01.30.2008 at 01:22AM PST, ID: 20775715

dog_star:

much as i would loved to have not turned my computer back on i really didn't have much choice.. thats the thing with working ;-)

so the surge/cut-out didn't seem to have caused any hardware problems, which is a relief... the only problem seems to be something corrupted on the vista start-up.

when i start the computer i see both xp and vista in my boot options.

xp starts fine.

vista starts booting, shows the coloured blocks moving cross the screen then goes to black screen and stays there. booting in safe mode gets to crcdisk.sys and hangs.

i'll give it a couple more hours and then format and restore to an image if i can't find a repair solution...

01.30.2008 at 02:37AM PST, ID: 20775966

Rank: Guru

Merete:

To run a chkdsk /r or fix boot use the recovery console cmd prompt.
Have you tried last known good config that worked? tap F8 in the advanced options below safemode scroll down.

you can use VistaBoot Pro to edit the BCD option. it will show you all the installations automatically.
VistaBoot Pro to edit the BCD option
http://www.vistabootpro.org/
Uninstall
you may want to remove Vista from your system, and reclaim the hard drive space. Microsoft has made this step very simple as well.

Boot your computer in to Windows XP.
Ensure you have the Vista DVD image emulated or in the DVD drive.
Go to Start and Run. Type in D:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force (without quotes, and replacing D: with the drive letter of your Vista DVD).
Restart the computer, and you will notice the boot selection menu is gone.
Format the partition/drive where you had Vista installed.
Remove two files (Boot.BAK & Bootsect.BAK) on your XP drives root folder (C:), these were backup files of your previous bootloader, now no longer useful.
Optional: Restart to ensure it still works.
Use your partition software to merge your partitions together.
And now you have returned your computer to its previous state, without Vista and without the new bootloader.

If you have problems with xp
then you use the recovery function on your XP CD to install the XP bootloader. From that, reinstall Vista.
first boot from your XP cd. Start the Recovery Console. In recovery console, type Fixboot ( fixmbr ) and press enter. After this command, type fixmbr to reset the master boot record. Exit the recovery console and reboot.

try booting off the vista disc.
You will need to enter the BIOS and set the optical drive as first boot. Hopefully you can still use the Vista recover CD to boot with and do a repair install of vista but at this point you may have to reformat and start all over again. Someone else may have a better option.

All the best with it.

Assisted Solution

01.30.2008 at 05:47AM PST, ID: 20776911

Rank: Sage

LeeTutor:

>tried booting from my vista dvd to run a repair but there were were no repair options shown... no idea why...

Did you do it as detailed on this page:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial148.html
How to automatically repair Windows Vista using Startup Repair

What is Startup Repair? This Microsoft page has a great deal more information about that:

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/Help/5c59f8c1-b0d1-4f1a-af55-74f3922f3f351033.mspx
Windows Help and How-To: Startup Repair: frequently asked questions

Startup Repair is designed to detect operating system startup problems and troubleshoot any found and correct them with little user interaction. It can repair problems such as:

- missing or corrupt drivers
- missing or corrupt system files
- missing or corrupt boot configuration settings
- corrupt registry settings
- corrupt disk metadata (master boot record, partition table, or boot sector.)

When the Startup Repair Tool has taken control, it analyzes startup log files for clues about the source of the problem and launches diagnostic tests to determine the cause. If it determines the cause of the failure, it attempts to fix the problem automatically. After successfully repairing the problem, it will reboot the system, and notify the user of the repairs, filing a detailed report in the Windows Vista event log.

If the Startup Repair Tool can identify the cause of the problem, but can't repair the problem by itself, it will provide access to a set of tools that you can use to manually troubleshoot the problem further. One of these is the Bootrec tool described below.

If the Startup Repair Tool cannot identify or repair the problem, it will roll back the system to the last configuration that was known to work (Last Known Good Configuration.) Again it will add detailed information about the problem to the Windows Vista event log.

Accepted Solution

02.01.2008 at 05:52AM PST, ID: 20796469

Rank: Sage

LeeTutor:

dog_star, any feedback?

dog_star

02.13.2008 at 02:12AM PST, ID: 20882986

hi,

sorry for the late reply to this...

thanks both for your suggestions but it looks like the problem was with a corrupted HD (or at least a partition thereof)...

@leetutor : as i mentioned in my post i wasn't getting any repair options when booting from my vista dvd... i'm using a custom build which is probably the reason...

after much faffing around i finally decided to restore an image i had of my system partition made using acronis true image...

about 90% of the way through restoration i received an error saying that (as i remeber) the number of blocks (?) didn't match...

so, went back and did a full format of this partition and tried again and it successfully restored. but, a day later i started getting crashes and restarts... it really looks like theres something quite terminally wrong with the HD so i've unplugged it and am back using my XP install (which was on a different HD) until i can get a new HD...

so thanks both for your help, and i'll award points for the effort :)

cheers

Merete

02.13.2008 at 03:55PM PST, ID: 20889705

Thanks dog_star sorry to hear that hope you didnt lose too much stuff, as I said in my first post the best course of action would be to slave it first. After power outages it's the most secure way to test the drive.

20080236-EE-VQP-29 / EE_QW_2_20070628